Primary election results - Jones, Palacios, Barnett win

For now the advertising on the radio and newspaper are done and the voting machines are all being gathered in storage for November. But the ramifications that took place during the primaries on Tuesday will be with the county and the state for a long time.

In the local county commissioner races, incumbent Democrat John Jones beat in-party challenger Kyle Edwards 1,263 to 815 when the votes were tallied.

In the other race for a commission seat that is being vacated by Bill Krompel after over two decades of service, newcomer David Palacios out polled long time local resident Dennis Dooley 1,366 to 682.

Both races were hotly contested in the Democratic primary as Republican challengers Travis Blackburn (who will oppose Jones) and Jae Potter (running against Palacios) were almost forgotten about during the many ads and campaigns stops made by the Democratic candidates. Both Blackburn and Potter won their party's nomination at the county convention in April, leaving them out of the primary limelight.

For county recorder, incumbent Democrat Vikki Barnett overcame a strong primary campaign by Stacie Romero to not only get on the ballot in November, but for all purposes win the election to the post outright since there are no challengers filed in that race from other parties for that seat in the November election. That tally was 1,319 to 721.

At the state level, Democratic Congressman Jim Matheson overcame a statewide campaign by party progressives to put Claudia Wright on the ballot in November verses a Republican and two unaffiliated candidates. Matheson won his contest in Carbon County 1,656 to Wright's 414 and in the second congressional district as a whole came in with a 68 percent majority margin over the challenger (21,380 to 10,274) with 98 percent of the districts reporting as of Wednesday morning.

In the only Republican primary race on the docket, Carbon GOP voters went for Mike Lee (220) over Tim Bridgewater (193). Statewide Lee also won by less than a 2 percent margin by beating his opponent 92,544 to 88,560 (with 99.2 percent of the districts reporting).

Now candidates from the various parties will begin to campaign for the final election on Nov. 2, where they hope to be elected to fill the positions they have run for on Jan. 1, 2011.